Oh, yes, she beat his ass like a bass drum, and he and the GOPers are still resonating from it.
After watching the second debate Sunday night, I told my husband: “I feel terrible — I just watched an intelligent, cultured, woman of great substance get dick-whipped by an asshole.”
I turned of the TV feeling slightly sick to my stomach...uneasy, sad, a little depressed. And then I read some tweets that described the debate as “stomach-churning,” “turned my stomach,” and I realized that other people, perhaps many others, had responded as I did.
That shared phenomenon got me to thinking, and I’ve invested some serious thinking time into that debate.
I reached the conclusion that Hillary really does have this...I think she pwned The Donald from the get-go. Follow my reasoning and see what you think:
- The campaign hired psychologists to provide advice about how Hillary should handle DJT — and all the potential Donalds who show up at the debate.
- Hillary came into the match-up with a road map, depending on which Donald actually showed up.
- An hour before the debate began, she knew which Donald would be there for sure: the scorched-earth, burn-the-house-down Donald — vitriolic, hostile, aggressive: Let’s call him Nasty Donald.
- The road map called for her to do five things: a. Invade his space b. Call him unfit to his face c. As much as possible, ignore his personal insults or charges against your husband d. As much as possible, stay focused on your own arguments e. Stay calm and poised, no matter what.
Let’s boil these down to three actionable precepts:
1. Stay true to yourself.
2. Minimize him.
Here’s how I see it. As a teenager, I tried mightily to out-gross my male pals. They said f**k and I replied f**k-f**k. I soon learned: I cannot out-gross most boys. They could always come up with something so disgusting that I would be left gobsmacked and wordless, unable and unwilling to get grosser.
Men liked bugs and snot when they were boys — they can almost always get grosser than women (at least until childbirth). Men are mostly bigger than women, mostly hit harder, mostly run faster. <Make formal bow to overlapping normal curves of the sexes and all that>.
Enacting precept 1: Focus on your truth. The Clinton team agreed that when he was disgusting, she should not try to equal or top him...
But this did not mean leaving him alone or abandoning her own lines of argument, as we all saw.
Enacting precept 2: Minimize him.
— She began by not shaking hands.
— She did not respond very much to the worst of his unhinged-ness — neither verbally nor nonverbally. the threat to jail her and the attack on Bill Clinton.
— She did not respond to his nonverbal stalking, pointing, and creeping.
— Although she she responded to the words of his arguments, she frequently simply summarized them as “not true,” and delivered her own ideas and analysis.
— She denied him “public space” by invading his side of the floor throughout the debate.
Keep in mind that the Clinton campaign knew the physical dimensions of the debate space in advance. It was quite small. If you re-watch the debate, you will see that when answering many of the questions, Hillary crossed the floor to stand in front of Donald’s chair and desk, effectively “invading” his side of the room. She did this repeatedly.
Millions of women use these techniques every day — glossing over or simply ignoring a male’s more outrageous statements and physically aggressive behaviors. They restrain their anger and focus on the tasks that need to be done, whether in the house or in the workplace.
Throughout much of Donald Trump’s life, many people must have become flustered, angered, or frightened by Trump’s outrageous behavior. But I’ll bet very few people have responded with the cool disdain that Hillary maintained towards him throughout the debate. (Yet she was quite warm towards the audience—hence the smiles, but not for him).
Trump is not used to this kind of response from women (and probably not from many men either). No wonder he became enraged and threw caution to the wind.
And that is the point, isn’t it? In full view of millions of people, Hillary Clinton did more than call him unfit — she handled her debate in such a way that he displayed his boorishness, his thuggish attempts at intimidation, and his essential cruelty and carelessness.
All the world saw the skulking scoundrel that Donald Trump is.
People, I think that this was a masterful, stunning performance, of an incredibly high order, the likes of which we rarely see.
Brava, Hillary Clinton!
Ave, Imperatora, qui sunt ad suffragium te salutant:
“We who are about to vote salute you.”
She pwned him.
